BOAC Flight 781 - Search, Recovery and Investigation

Search, Recovery and Investigation

That day's edition of The New York Times carried a piece about the accident.

At first the task of finding out what happened was difficult. In 1954, there were no black boxes, no cockpit voice recorders or flight data recorders so there was no way of knowing what was going on. Established protocol for aircraft accident investigation did not exist.

An extensive search for the aircraft was organised including the Royal Navy ship HMS Barhill and the civilian salvage vessel Sea Salvor from Malta.

Witnesses to the crash were a group of Italian fishermen who were preparing to do their catch. Upon seeing the plane's remnants falling into the water, the fishermen rushed to the scene to recover the bodies and to find possible survivors, of which there were none. In order to find more evidence concerning the cause of the crash, the bodies were brought to the coroner for autopsy. During the examination, the pathologist Antonio Fornari found broken limbs and damaged limbs, which occurred after death. But Fornari also discovered a distinct pattern of injuries, which were identified as the cause of death, in most of the victims. These injuries consisted of fractured skulls and ruptured and otherwise damaged lungs. Fornari found no evidence of an explosion, and he felt confused by the pattern of injuries.

The ruptured lungs were a sure indicator that the air cabin depressurised because the sudden decrease in pressure would cause the lungs to expand until they rupture. In order to support the theory and also to confirm the cause of the skull fractures, the crash was simulated at the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Farnborough, using the same conditions of the actual plane prior to crash. To do this experiment, a model fuselage was constructed similar to that of the Comet.

Dummies were also seated within the fuselage to simulate possible movements of passengers during the crash. To simulate the crash, the investigators deliberately ruptured the model by increasing the air pressure within it until it exploded. The movement of the dummies within the air cabin at the moment of explosion was conclusive of skull fracture as they were thrown out of their seats and slammed head-first into the ceiling.

Wreckage of the aircraft was eventually found on the sea floor and subsequently raised and transported to the Royal Aircraft Establishment for investigation. Upon examination of the wreckage it became obvious that the aircraft had broken up in mid-air, and initially it was thought that the aircraft might have been brought down by a bomb. Suspicion then shifted to the possibility of an engine turbine explosion and modifications were put in hand to encase the turbine ring in other Comets with armour plate, to contain a possible disintegrating turbine disk.

In the meantime, all Comets were to be grounded until these modifications had been carried out. The possibility of failure of the pressure cabin had been considered but then discounted due to the Comet's cabin having been designed to a considerably higher strength than was considered necessary at the time.

The following day, the New York Times reported that BOAC had withdrawn all Comets from service.

While the investigation continued, BOAC desperately tried to get Comets back in service, and on 23 March it succeeded. BOAC's chairman commented on television, "We obviously wouldn't be flying the Comet with passengers if we weren't satisfied conditions were suitable." But a second BOAC Comet was lost on 8 April 1954, a charter flight operating as South African Airways Flight 201 took off from Rome bound for Egypt with 14 passengers and seven crew. Thirty-three minutes into the flight the pilot reported to be on course flying at 10,000 metres, then all contact was lost.

Sir Arnold Hall, a Cambridge University scholar and scientist, was appointed as the head accident investigator.